


(Does Not Exist) Take An Exit

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3365300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint’s brother shows back up and starts making promises again.  Barney takes him home like some kicked around puppy and throws him into a new high school, into a flood of treading teenagers struggling to keep hold of their life vests.</p>
<p>Avengers - High School AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Barney shows up again. He has washed the juvie off his heels and gotten himself an army uniform, boots laced up just right. Clint stares him down like a stranger offering him tampered candy. His arms are crossed, his face is cross, and he don’t got a damn thing to say. All that time, The Sole Barton, whiling away, numbering the promises broken, not a word from Big Bro. But here he is once again, offering Clint an exit from the ramshackle group home he’d landed in most recently. “Legit this time,” Barney says, “hundred percent legit.”

  
It has been 8 years since the accident that landed Clint and Barney in the system; 5 years since Barney had convinced him to disappear from their foster home, make a go of it on their own; 4 1/2 years since Barney had been caught in a house he wasn’t supposed to be in and Clint had followed his orders, had taken off from his lookout, had made a break for it.

  
He hadn’t run fast enough, far enough, and neither had Barney.

  
Barney has their father’s grin, toothy and persuasive, but in the corners Clint can see cloaks and daggers. Clint tries to process him as a whole, not as the echoes of years ago. His hair is close cropped and his posture is rigid. Barney, _his_ Barney, was a slouching son of a bitch. He wore his hair long, unwashed, just to cover to the sheen of devilry in his eyes.

“I’m a corporal, kid,” Barney says, teeth glinting like weapons, “I’m a damned war hero. I can get you outta this place, for real this time.”

Clint’s eyes are slits, “War hero?”

  
“Bronze Star, kid. They give that out for Heroism, with a capital H, dig it?”

  
Clint shakes his head. He doesn’t dig a damn thing. Barney sighs and for the first time since Clint was ushered in to the group home’s dining room, Barney stops smiling.

  
“I’m sorry, Clint,” he says in a wispy sigh. All cues tell Clint he is telling the truth and if there is a damn thing Clint knows on this planet, it is what Barney looks like when he lies. It was one thing Clint could rely on him to do. He lied to their Pop, to their Ma, to the neighbors, the teachers, the social workers. He told their case worker that Clint’s hearing was a-one, hundred percent, poking him the ribs to agree. Clint didn’t manage to catch what he had been agreeing to. _No one’ll want to adopt a deaf kid_ , Barney had promised him. Well, no one wanted to adopt Clint anyway. But he did what Barney told him because Barney never lied to Clint.

  
Not then.

  
“I got you mixed up in some shit. I didn’t know what I was doing when I asked you to run away with me. I — I just wanted to protect you, kid. I swear that’s what it was. When I saw what that son of a bitch had done — But I did it wrong. I shouldn’t have put you through that.”

  
Barney, _his_ Barney, never admitted when he was wrong. If Clint had years ago chucked the Rules of Barney out the window, then with this apology, he slams the window shut.  
“You’re still mad at me, right?”

  
Clint doesn’t have words for Barney. He stares at his hands, folded over crude, carved graffiti on the dining room table. _Poke Smot, Poke Smot, Everybody Poke Smot_ , it says, just like it has for years. A relic of wise words from an ascended delinquent. He wonders where the artist went. He hopes he is poking smot.

  
“How is everything going in here?” Charlie, the house leader, materializes in the doorway as is his wont. It is his nice guy way of existing in a house of displaced boys brimming with ire and spite. He flits anxiously from room to room, trying to gently guide his wards in the direction of recovery. That is what he assumes they all need. Recovery. He memorizes the words in each of the boys’ files, taking to heart the tragedy of their stories, assuming they will appreciate his tender hesitance in contrast to hostile force they are used to.

  
Clint does — appreciate it, he supposes.

  
“Yes, thank you,” Barney replies, Harold Barton’s grin on his face.

  
“Clint?” Charlie asks, his voice amplifying to reach through Clint’s muffled ears. His official file still tells Barney’s story about his ears — a-one, hundred percent. But Charlie is smarter that the official files, even if Clint is still compelled by his brother’s orders eight damn years ago.

  
Clint nods over his shoulders, “‘s fine.”

  
“Okay, let me know if you need anything, all right, Clint?”

  
Clint nods again and Charlie flits away. Clint knows where he is going, to hover. The Charlie Motto — don’t push. He offers help with homework, doesn’t judge when a kid comes home from a fight, teases about girls, tries to settle himself in the boys’ minds as a beckon of safety, a symbol of some approximation of home.

  
“He seems nice,” Barney offers, “How’d you luck in to a guy like that?”

  
Clint shrugs. He knows he is getting to Barney. He knows Barney wants his molars showing, a smile a mile wide, embracing the long lost sibling. A merry reunion worthy of the silver screen. But Clint just traces the _Smot_ with his pinky nail and doesn’t look up.

  
“Do you like it here?” Barney tries.

  
Clint shrugs again, “Don’t matter. ‘ll be eighteen in two months.”  Barney’s eyes follow Clint’s finger, moving fluidly around the chunks of missing wood.

“I know,” he admits lowly, “that is sort of why I am here, Clint. I know you got held back after that stunt I pulled. I made you miss too much school. I — I want you to finish high school. I just don’t know how you are going to do that if you are out on the street in two months. I don’t want that. I want you start life out right —”

  
“Too late.”

  
Another sigh, long and tired, “I know. Look, kid, I got a good thing going with the army right now. I got myself stationed at a base for a while. Nice and stable, no war zones. I got enough money to get us a little place. Nothing big, but there’ll be food and clothes and some hearing aids, if you still need them. Looks like you never got them.”

  
Clint doesn’t say anything.

  
“You won’t have to work, kid, not ’til you are out of school. Don’t have to worry about shelter or food and getting through the night. Just, just let me take care you. For real this time.”

  
Clint studies his brother’s face, how it looks open and willing and not at all like the pissy, spitting explosive whose footsteps followed Clint in to the woods that night; whose footsteps disappeared in to the wrong direction.

  
“Come on, Clint. The Barton’s need a high school diploma. Remember how Ma was always on us about that? We’ve never had one. Think about it. _Clint Barton_ — first Barton not to be a certified shit for brains. Has a nice ring, right?”

  
Clint nods slowly and Barney seems to understand that means he needs to think. He sits there, the same hot realization that has been creeping through his body for months now, gripping in his chest, around his brain. Two months. That’s all he had left in the system. After that — the street. No skating by with enough food in his stomach, no keeping Charlie off his back by cheating through tests, no warm room to bullshit essays. The street. The venom of injustice is pulsing in his veins just like it was an hour ago, too loud to hear Charlie knock on the door of the room he shared with two other boys. Too loud to hear him say, _your brother is here_.

  
An echo of pain shakes through his bad ear, bringing him back to the top bunk squeezed in the closet he shared with Barney when their parents were still around. He remembers his hearing dampened worse than usual, remembers a cotton ball shoved inside to stop anymore blood from spilling out. He remembers all sound reaching him through an ocean of water. He remembers Barney pulling out a book on American Sign Language that he stole from the school library. He remembers Barney forcing his hand to each letter of the alphabet, making Clint understand as he spelled out “I W-I-L-L T-A-K-E C-A-R-E O-F Y-O-U.”

  
“Okay,” Clint finally grunts, “I’ll get the fucking diploma.”

  
Barney smiles again, the shadow of their father just behind his pearly whites.

 

Three Weeks Later

 

To feel normal, Steve wakes up before his alarm clock, before the sun can break. He does push-ups in his dark room. Jumping jacks. Sit-ups. He takes a shower — cold. After years of military school and the hot water running dry before he could scramble to a spout, a warm shower is worthless to him. He lets the icy drops awake his nerves, finds solace in the familiarity of being too cold too early.

  
To feel normal, he brushes his teeth, combs his hair, makes sure his clothes hang symmetrically, straight, not a wrinkle in sight. To feel normal, he makes a protein shake and oatmeal for breakfast. To feel normal, he hums to himself _Revelry_ and even though his voice is grossly flat, for a moment he feels normal.

  
And then his mother shuffles in to the kitchen and gives him a weak smile and nothing is normal. The part of his brain that is a masochist waits for his father’s firm shoulders to arrive square in the doorway. The part of his brain that hates himself waits for his mother to wrap her skinny arms around his father’s bulky torso. None of it happens. He eats his oatmeal and his mother makes herself tea and they while the morning away in silence.

  
He cleans his dirty dishes, imaging the ribbing his father would give him he left them soaking in the sink. _Oh no, your majesty, your servitude is unwanted here_ , his father laughs in his ear, _a queen should never be required to pick up after herself_. His stomach feels hollow. Steve kisses his mother on the top of her head and turns to leave.  
“Don’t you want a ride to school, sweetie?” his mother asks. “It’s your first day.”

  
Steve shakes his head, smiles, says, “No. I think I’d like to walk. I think it would — make me feel normal.”

  
His mother wants to say something, Steve can tell in the way her lips minutely part and shut, part and shut. But her eyes just begin to fill with tears and all he can offer is a simple hug. It’s not enough. He leaves.

  
It is a little over a mile to the high school. He has walked by it, around it, through it a million times but never _to it_. He pulls out his phone and texts Bucky, because Bucky is where things are normal. _I can’t do this_. He presses send. He makes it to the gate of the high school before a buzz calls his attention back to the screen. _Just do it_ , it says. It shouldn’t help, but it does.

  
He is two weeks late to the start of the school year. His skin doesn’t seem to fit his person as he slips in to the main office and waits for the line of students buzzing around the overworked secretaries to thin out. In the corner of the room, relaxed on a chair, is a head of crimson loops, coiffed to perfection fixed atop a toned body clad in black spandex work out clothing. He thinks to himself, _is it?_ He looks away and back and the hair is gone.

  
Out in the hallway he sees the red hair attached to sauntering hips reach a figure sitting on the ground, hunched around a notebook, black curls spilling in every direction. He thinks, _Is it?_

  
“Steve Rogers!” someone exclaims. He is being hugged before he can find the source of his name. A thin body, long delicate almost-curves are pushed against him. He finds strawberry blonde hair underneath his chin.

  
“Pepper?” he asks, and she pulls away. Her face is as freckled as it is in his memory, and red from the summer sun on her dainty complexion. She smiles wide, teeth white as snow but warm all the same.

  
“It’s. been. _years._ ” She says, the creases of her mouth never losing their joyous bounce. “And you’re back in public school. Crazy! God, you’ve grown. A lot. I was taller than you when you left. Is it weird being back?”

  
Steve hesitates, looking for words to describe the vast weirdness swallowing his life for the past two weeks, but there aren’t any so he settles for nodding sheepishly.

  
“Well, as Student Class President of the junior class, I volunteered to help show you around today. It’s not such a big school, but I figured you got enough on your plate to worry about, no need to add finding your math class to the list.” She is still smiling, but her allusion hits him. She doesn’t notice, or doesn’t let on that she does, because she keeps smiling. “I already got your schedule and everything.”

  
“President?” he asks hollowly, searching for normal conversation, for beats of dialogue that don’t leave him nauseous.

  
“Of the junior class.”

  
He gives her something close to a smile and says, “Always knew you were meant for big and bright things.”

  
She blushes. He feels satisfied with his ability to be normal.

 

In Norway, Thor’s family is getting ready for bed. His mind is there, saying goodnight to his mother and father. There, he asks how Loki is doing. There, he promises to find strength through strife. There, he clutches his loved ones close and is whole. Is loved.

  
“What’s with the face, big guy?” Natasha asks, picking over her granola lunch.

  
Thor face is a wide smile before Jane can switch her gaze to worry mode. “What do you mean, friend?” he asks.

  
“You looked...” Natasha shrugs, “never mind. Contemplative.”

  
Thor makes himself a beam of sunlight.

 

To feel normal, Steve stays after school and tries out for football. The team is already picked and the positions are set, but coach gives him a pass. A knowing heaviness is in his eye when he doesn’t require Steve to tell him why he is two weeks late to school. “Knew your dad,” he says, his voice thick with emotion, “good man.” Steve is glad the coach is taciturn by nature.

  
He has spent his first day back outside of his body, floating above himself, watching his hand wave to familiar faces, matching them to the rounded childhood smiles he knew years ago. Their words are friendly, bouncing off his lifeless frame as they laughed at him — _with_ him, “Damn, Rogers, they give you steroids in the service?”

  
With his arm snapping back to throw the football, sending it squarely in to the chest of a Nordic statue come to life that Steve doesn’t recognize, he feels himself returning to the physical realm. His muscles fall in to a relaxed rhythm, making his blood pump hard and steady. Barked orders fill him with a familiar goal, a purpose to his motions, something he had lost somewhere during the conversation with civilian liaisons the army sent.

  
He lets himself fall in place like a jigsaw piece, fitting in to a completed puzzle, becoming just an extension of his teammates.

  
With the sound of coach’s whistles, a couple dozen sturdy teen legs march over and take a knee under his command. They struggle to catch their breaths as the receive platitudes and constructive criticism and are beckoned to bring it in.

  
A broad hand claps on Steve’s shoulder in the locker room. He looks over to see the wide grin of that Viking Steve spied on the field. He is mightier up close than he was across the field, standing a head above Steve. It has been a long time since Steve felt small, not since the growth spurts of junior high vastly made up for his puny start. It hasn’t been since elementary school, when his sickly frame made him a target for the more developed boys. Something instinctive in Steve awakes and makes him flinch away from the larger boy, preparing for a hard shove or a cruel word.

  
“You played well on the field, friend,” The mighty norse is smiling, speaking with an accent Steve isn’t educated enough to place.

  
Steve tries to smile off the over familiarization. He looks around to see how his once and again classmates are reacting to the blonde giant. They shoot him impressed glances, like the boy has actually walked out of the pages of a book of mythology. Someone from a locker bay down shouts, “Get it, Thor! You’re gonna kill everyone this year.”

  
Nothing wavers in Thor’s face as Steve does nothing to hide his confused eyes. He continues to radiate a forceful good will, some unbeatable optimism leaking from him. “I am Thor,” he more announces than says, his voice possessing an inherent boom of thunder. “And it would be foolish not to add you to our team this season. I put the utmost emphasize on making the acquaintance of my teammates. May I ask your name?”

  
Steve catches the eye of Buddy Lancaster, a squirrelly Corner Back who has lived up the street from Steve since he was in preschool. Buddy laughs. “Don’t mind Thor, Rogers, he’s a foreigner. But man can he catch a ball. If he is running, ain’t no one bringing him down.”

  
Steve can see Thor’s back teeth with the force he is pulling his lips apart. “You are too kind, Buddy.”

  
“I’m Steve,” he replies, clearing his throat and sticking his hand out only to find it swallowed by Thor’s crushing grip.

  
“Steve!” Thor booms, “I am honored to meet you. I must say you play with a technical skill that seems to show great knowledge of this sport — _Football_. We do not have it in my country. I am still learning. May I ask you some questions?”  Steve shoots another glance at Buddy, hoping for some advice on how to tackle the mountain in front of him, but Buddy only laughs and slams his locker shut. He walks away, patting Steve on the shoulders.

  
“Uh — sure,” he finally says, brave faced, “I can explain a few things. I was uh — just about to start walking home.”

  
“Shall we start towards the parking lot then? My ride is there.”

  
Vaguely, Steve wonders if Thor knows how to not smile as the giant launches in to a string of questions about Fourth Downs and Two-Point Conversions. Steve is busy looking at his hands, trying to explain plays to Thor with the aid of gestures, when they enter the dull September sunlight in the parking lot. “Thor!” a voice calls, tickling a sensation of attachment in Steve’s head. Both he and Thor look up to see a group of teens spilling out the open doors of a dented maroon Camry.

  
When Thor looks up, his smile returns in full, instead of the loose smile of concentration he was wearing. He offers a large hand wave. “Come, meet my friends,” Thor beckons, guiding Steve with a hand on his back.

  
In the shadows of the patchwork group, Steve can see a collection of gap toothed smiles and dirty faces sitting in his bedroom, playing Playstation 2 and depleting his parents’ potato chip supply. Without thinking logically, he allows his footsteps to fall in line with Thor and he is ushered in to a hole in the circle of friends.

  
“Well, smack my ass,” Tony smirks, looking squarely in Steve’s eyes, something malicious in his gaze, “heard you were back around.”

  
“Yeah,” Steve scratches the back of his neck, feeling his face burn as he takes in his old friends. Despite the years and the fact that they are now straddling the exit of puberty, despite Tony’s facial hair and Natasha’s sudden chest, they look just the same as they did the summer before he was sent to military school. Tony’s smile is cocked with self-satisfaction and mistrust. Bruce isn’t smiling at all but his curls are more wanton than ever. Natasha’s eyes are steel, unreadable and cold, while Jane is the picture of openness even with the bashful blush that is continuous under her cheeks. “Yeah, I’m back.”

  
“Ah!” Thor booms, “you are all acquainted? Excellent! Steve here, was helping me to understand the subtleties of the football game. He seems to be a most capable player.”

  
“Football,” Tony asks, “you play football?”

  
Steve clears his throat, “yeah. I, uh — like it.”

  
“You’ve certainly been eating your Wheaties,” Natasha comments. Steve tries to catch a glint or flicker, something in Natasha’s eyes that would tell him how she is feeling. Before he left, Steve had become one of the few people practiced enough to read Natasha’s mood by a simple flit in the corner of her lip. Either he has become too rusty or she has become too composed.

  
He tries catching Bruce’s eye, some powerful hope desperate in his chest, but he can’t. Bruce just stares blankly at his sneaker. They are falling apart just like all of Old Bruce’s old sneakers. Steve watches him for a few seconds; waits. Bruce just looks up to Tony. Tony has something fiery in his gaze that makes Steve uncomfortable, like his presence is an insult. Jane — his last hope. She smiles to him, unsaid kind words resting on her lips.

  
“I am lost,” Thor announces, breaking some apparent Law of Tension. For the first time his smile melts away from his eyes, “Why is there an awkwardness in the air? Are you all not friends?”

  
“Sure,” Jane says, “sure, we are. It’s just been a long time since Steve was around.”

  
Thor struggles with a furrowed brow, “Should you not be happy to see him return, then?” he Thor-whispers, leaning in to Jane’s ear, his deep voice still reverberating to the group.

  
“We are,” Jane replies, smiling again to Steve.

  
Tony scoffs, his arms crossed so tightly against his chest he seems to be trying to hold himself back, “Don’t we have to get Tasha home so she can go boogie down?”

  
“ _Boogie down_ ,” Natasha rolls her eyes, muttering spite.

  
“Of course,” Thor replies, turning to Steve, “I am sorry but we must make haste. Might I find you tomorrow to continue our conversation?”

  
“Yeah, sure,” Steve smiles past the lump in throat. At least one person might enjoy his company. “if you like.”

  
“I would like this very much,” Thor concludes amicably.

  
Steve watches, wordless, as the five of them fold back in to Jane’s too small car. Thor takes the passenger seat and slides it back with sudden thrust, causing Natasha to curse him as she is forced to hug her knees.

  
Steve doesn’t bother to wave as they pull out of the parking lot.

 

Bruce scans mildly over a text book Tony bought for a mechanics summer program he attended a few years ago from Tony’s bay window. His face is relaxed, at peace, as his eyes absorb the complex words. Tony tries to focus on the monotony of his science homework but he can barely manage. His counselors struggled to satisfy Tony’s genius with the highest levels of science the public school could offer, but he is bored anyway. He is always bored.

  
“How can you stand it?” Tony breaks the silence too suddenly, and Bruce nearly jumps out of his seat. Tony waits patiently for Bruce to regain his composure. He lets Bruce pretend that his reactions aren’t violently out of place in the constant stillness of the Stark abode. The house would require residence to possess any unpredictability.

  
“What?” Bruce asks.

  
“All those bullshit classes you take. Chemistry I? Bruce, you must be losing it.”

  
Bruce just shrugs and sticks himself back inside the book, pulling it up to cover him.

  
“You learned all that stuff in... what? Third grade?”

  
“I don’t want to talk about this, Tony,” Bruce says, the force of his words too pitiful for Tony to press any longer. Bruce is tightly coiled and had been since the day Bruce was ushered in to Tony’s second grade classroom after it was decided he was too bright for the first grade. A few years later, Tony found out that brilliant maneuver had cost Bruce three broken ribs when his father found out. Tony still doesn’t know how Brian was convinced to let Bruce maintain his advanced placement, but Bruce kept showing up, bruises hidden well enough.

  
“I should get back,” Bruce says, setting Tony’s book aside and starting to put his things in his backpack.

  
“You can stay here tonight, you know.” Tony wants him to stay. He knows his face betrays him because it is open and it is begging. Tony wonders how many shades Bruce can decipher, just the ones that want Bruce safe? Or could he also see the ones that don’t want to be alone another night? He only wonders for a moment before he remembers Bruce can read him like he can a string of equations.

  
Bruce shakes his head, “No, I should get home. He’s been — stressed lately.”

  
Tony swallows a string of insults and pleas and picks up his car keys.

  
While they drive, Tony talks. He glides over the backroads that take him to Bruce’s home with ease, barely noticing the familiar streets as they weave through short cuts. Bruce doesn’t talk, so Tony does, because Bruce is having a Silent Day. Even at his best, Bruce keeps to himself but on a Silent Day, Bruce is somewhere else entirely. He is shrunken back in to some hole inside himself. Tony knows things are brewing at the Banner house. Things are edging towards something bad. Tony fights the urge to turn around.  
Tony turns down the winding hill that leads to Bruce’s home at the very bottom. He knows as his wheels hit the speed bumps warning cars to slow down, that in a minute his car lights are going to line up with the driveway of Steve Rogers.

  
“So what do you think of the New and Improved Golden Boy?” Tony asks.

  
“Huh?”

  
“Mr. Rogers, minus the sweaters, plus rippling muscles and a stupid hair cut. Mr. Fucking-High-and-Tight.”

  
“Steve?”

  
“No. Not Steve.”

  
Bruce shrugs, “He seems just like old Steve, sort of. But different I guess. I don’t know.” He shrugs again.

  
“Well I —“

  
“You don’t have to tell me what you think, Tony,” Bruce says, his voice reading only as exhausted, “I already know.”

  
Tony shuts his mouth, only in reverence for the stillness Bruce seems to require at the moment. He looks weak, staring out at the darken neighborhood, like he deciding then to give up on something he hadn’t begun to try.

  
“You know why he is back?” Bruce mutters to the window.

  
Tony swallows, “Yeah, yeah, Papa Rogers got himself blowed up in a war zone. Sob story, sob story.”

  
“I liked Joe,” Bruce whispers and all Tony can do is bit down on his tongue.

  
Bruce stiffens as Tony pulls in to his driveway, killing the headlights. Though the surface of the house is dim and calm, from it’s bowls, Bruce and Tony can hear the muffled bellows, an anger shaking from the foundation of the house itself.

  
“You know, we can still go back to my place,” Tony says quickly, but Bruce doesn’t look at him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the rust colored garage door in front of him. “We can steal my Dad’s booze and get wasted watching documentaries —“ he catches a glare from Bruce, “or I’ll get wasted and you can pull my hair back while I throw up.”

  
Bruce doesn’t bite. His hand snaps to the handle of the door as a woman’s scream echoes from somewhere beyond that garage door. “I have to go,” he says, his voice just a panicked whisper.

  
“Call me later, okay?” Tony rushes to get out, “Just let me know you’re — “

  
Bruce’s door slams shut, cutting him off. Tony watches him disappear and doesn’t wait to see if any more screams awake the night. He feels poison burn a hole in his stomach as he drives away.


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as Miss Heller’s lips close around the words “ _find partners_ ,” the classroom begins to buzz with movement. Natasha stays defiantly still, trying to calculate the number of students in the classroom. She totals an odd number and her eyes begin to boil with the words — _you leave me on my own_. The noise in the classroom begins to pick up as duos fall together. Natasha tries to keep her head down, scribbling her own ideas for a project she can complete solo.

“Natasha?” Miss Heller’s voice is silky but assertive. Natasha complies to lifting her eyes at the young teacher. “I believe Clint still needs a partner.”

Natasha’s eyebrows arch, doing the work to ask, _Clint_?

“In the back,” Miss Heller replies.

Natasha hadn’t counted the sandy blond hair sitting at the last lab station in the room, bent over a notebook, apparently enthralled in some very important doodling. She tries but cannot remember the boy in the back and instantly resents him for the fact. Sighing, she picks up her work and walks to his lab table. She clears her throat, standing over a boy who embodies the definition of _scruffy_. His unattended hair falls into his unshaven face. There are holes in his dull purple shirt — wrinkled, of course, exposing some of the curly strands of wheat-colored hair at the bottom of his stomach. He doesn't bother to look up at her. She tries again, clearing her throat obviously, allowing it to be tinged by her annoyance. His pen continues to trace the wavy marks on the corner of the project’s assignment page.

“Excuse me?” she attempts. Nothing. She tries again, louder, ruder.

The boy — Clint jumps and turns to stare at her wide-eyed. “Oh, sorry,” he recovers quickly, “Just — uh, spaced.”

A voice mocks him in her head. “We are supposed to be finding partners for the project right now,” She says, her mouth still quirked in annoyance.

“Oh, yeah? I was kind of hoping there would be an odd number,” he admits, watching her carefully as she takes the seat next to him.

“No dice,” her words are clipped. She barely registers a feeling in her stomach that tells her this _Clint_ has done nothing to warrant rudeness. It is a dull gurgle that the spite in her chest manages to outweigh. “We’re the last two left. Natasha.”

 _Na-ta-sha_ , he mouths silently, offering her a half-smile, “Clint.”

She eyes him strangely. Something about him inserts himself like blockage in the cogs of her brain. The cynicism Natasha cultivates as her main mode of expression has built for her a shrewd eye. But there is an edge to Clint that defies shrewdness, a shallowness to his expression that deflects profiling like a mirror does beams of light. With nothing left to do, Natasha begins to detail her thoughts on their Chemistry assignment which is to build a physical representation of a molecule. Clint watches her with a dull stare that are trained on her lips rather than her eyes.

He stays quiet for the most part as the minutes drip by, nodding his head in agreement when she pauses for his opinion. He keeps his eyes still on her mouth, the flicker of movement in them synced with the parting of her lips. A creep appears up her spine, a sense she has long trained herself to pay special attention to. She is no stranger to the lustful sheen that appears in men’s eyes when they look at her. She knows the dopy stares that follow her, examining her, the curves of her hips, her breasts, her pouty Russian lips. They follow her where ever she goes, appearing in the faces of men on the street, pimply employees at the supermarket, lustful sexagenarians on the bus, the arrogant boys of her school. They seem to target her specifically, trying to shake her from her frozen poise with harassment. This boy too looks as if he is trying to force himself underneath her skin.

She smirks, like he could even get close. “Can I help you with something?”

Huh?” his mouth hangs open dumbly, his dull ocean blue eyes meeting hers almost lazily. It doesn’t warm him to her.

“Do you mind not looking at me like that?” The sharpness of her expression reflects in his dead eyes. The sight of the hardness practiced on her face is unfulfilling this time.

“Like what?” he asks, his eyes wandering back down to her lips.

“Like that.”

His head snaps away from her face entirely. There are flickers of thoughts sparking in his gaze, but they arise and disappear too quickly for Natasha to read them. “Sorry,” he offers through a squared jaw, “I just uh — sorry. It’s just that you’re —“

“I’m what?” she snaps, knowing the crude things teenage boys can devise to call her.

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. His body is tense, each muscle is clenched and swollen in it’s place. He opens his eyes to look at her and all they do is reflect. “You’re on my bad side,” he says hollowly. Her brain skips over half realizations, fixing him with a furrowed brow. He points up to his ear, displeasure finally reading underneath his trained expression. “I don’t hear so good sometimes. You know, when there are a lot of people talking or something.” He motions to the expanse of the classroom and all the small groups collecting in to one larger noise.

“Oh,” her chiseled expression falls for a moment, showing an image close to embarrassment until it is once again showing nothing to nobody. “I didn’t realize,” she admits quietly, “you’re deaf?”

“I ain’t deaf,” he replies, a little too fiery. “I just can’t hear too good sometimes. Left ear is the worst and you're on my left and ipso facto — whatever.”

More embarrassment creeps up under her mask, blooming in small batches of pink on her cheeks. She shakes her head, trying to rid herself of any sign of weakness. She doesn’t know his game, or even if he is playing one, but she isn’t going to lose anytime soon. “Sorry,” she mutters reluctantly, “were you reading my lips?” She realizes as the words come out of her mouth that he still is. The movement of her lips feel awkward for the first time in her life. She is suddenly aware of the shapes she makes as she asks, “Would it be easier if I moved to your other side?”

He doesn’t move to answer right away. He sits there, unreadable. Presumably thoughts are igniting behind his expression, but Natasha can’t see them. She feels like a tree suddenly being severed from it’s roots.

Before he can reply, Miss Heller calls the attention back to the front of the room and the waves of discussion wrapping Clint and Natasha in a blanket of noise fall away. He doesn’t look at her again that class, his eyes centered on Miss Heller. She tries to learn the creases of his face, to see if there are answers in their placements.

 

Tony sits abandoned on the abandoned concrete steps in the back of the school. His lunch is next to him, abandoned. A pattern emerges to him. He laughs mirthlessly. The sight of his turkey sandwich elicits a familiar gurgle to roll through his gut, echoing the sensation of his stomach digesting itself. He can't eat during moments like this. Moments when Bruce didn’t show up to first period, when just fourteen hours ago Tony dropped Bruce off at Brian Banner’s version of a home knowing — goddamn _knowing_ more solidly than he knew anything else that he should have locked his car doors and driven Bruce back to his house. But he didn’t. He never did. He let Bruce walk in to the damn lion’s den like always. And of course Bruce never fucking calls him back.

Jane appears next to him, her feather light footsteps not making a sound as she shuffles down the concrete steps. She smiles shyly at him. Even after all the years they had been friends, all the hours spinning theories around each other, she still seems embarrassed to be around at him. He returns her smile, his grin still heavy from the weight of Bruce on his conscience.

“Where’s Thor?” He asks, missing the Big Blond Shadow she had acquired sometime last Spring when her parents had to the idea to take in a foreign exchange student.

“He is with Steve and some other guys from the _football team_ ,” she comments lightly, knowing the mention of Steve would sour him to conversation.  
A scoff sputters out of Tony’s lips, “Can you believe it? Steve comes back and now he is like Mr. All-American?”

“He always was,” Jane replies in her usual soft way, her no-feathers-ruffled tone, “he is just taller now.”

“Yeah but the football team, he was just an asthmatic boy scout before, scrawnier that Bruce even —”

“Are you still talking about Steve, Tony?”

Tony is on his feet before Bruce can finish his question. His eyes are slits, narrowed in on his friend’s waxy expression, noting the way his brown eyes are dull with lack of sleep. He checks all exposed skin, but there isn’t much. Even on the hottest days of summer, Bruce keeps himself covered. There aren’t any signs of violence in view but that doesn’t mean much to Tony anymore. He knows that if Brian has his wits about him, he will make sure it doesn’t show. Even if Brian isn’t too careful, Bruce will take up the helm of the cover-up. Another valuable lesson passed on from father to son. Tony is too intent to scoff.

Bruce tries to back away from Tony’s eyes, but Tony only narrows them further. “So explain to me why you weren’t in first period.”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about,” Bruce tries feebly.

“The fuck, Bruce?”

“Chill out, Tony.”

“For real, Bruce. You’re the one always lecturing me about _stress_. What do you think this shit is? You never f— you never called me back.” There is no lightness in Tony’s tone, usually a calculated mix of disdain and airiness. Now it has the consistency of stones, hitting the ground with cracks and thuds.

“Just — don’t worry about it, okay? Let it go, Tony, please,” Bruce shrugs and sits down, avoiding Jane’s delicate eyes as he does.

“You’re the goddamn worst, you know that,” Tony takes a sit next to him, feeling himself settle fractionally with Bruce solid and alive and next to him. Tony notes how there is relative ease in the way Bruce sits, not comprised of awkward leanings to compensate for bruises. He tries to find enough solace in that to continue through the day.

Bruce tries for a distraction, “This is becoming an obsession, Tony, this whole Steve thing.”

Natasha appears walking blithely down the steps. Bruce is thankful that she is a worthy distraction herself. Her face is stoic and drawn in derision as she sits next to Bruce, the intent of her glare focused on Tony. “Steve? You’re still on that? Get it together, Stark. No one cares that you are still butt hurt because he didn’t want to be your friend in fifth grade.”

“That’s not what happened,” Tony bites back.

“Whatever,” her eyes roll, normally an encapsulation of all that she needs to say, but today she continues. “It was six years ago. Sort out your priorities, kid.”

“I have them sorted, thank you. And I am not obsessed. I’ve brought him up once — twice. At least I am talking about it. That it is weird. It’s weird, all right. He shows up again and it’s like he never did anything wrong. And you are all fine to go along with that.”

“You’re the only one still holding on to that,” Bruce mutters to his hands. Tony looks at him sideways, wanting to use words he knows he isn’t allowed to say. Not where Bruce can hear them. Words about ugly things in Bruce’s life that some force of gravity keeps them all from uttering.

“It’s weird, fine,” Jane says, pulling attention away from Bruce. Bruce isn’t sure if she does it on purpose, but he loves her all the same. “It’s weird that he is back. It’s weird to see him around again. Okay. But it doesn’t have to be this big deal. It doesn’t have to be the culmination of a years old grudge. We used to be his friends. And,” she bits her lip hesitantly, “maybe he needs friends right now.”

They all breathe out at once. Even Tony, with his grudge, can see as well as the others that there is a dark cloud following Steve around.

Tony glares at her, but it is less real this time. He is switching to his well-meaning mode. Tony seems to have only two forms of communication: using sarcasm to create tension and using sarcasm to diffuse tension. “You’re too soft, Foster. Too well-meaning.”

“You say that like it is a bad thing, Stark,” Natasha kicks him lightly with her toe, but she is smiling now, in her tight-lipped Natasha way.

“Besides, Jane’s just on his side because he is her boyfriend’s newest biffle,” Tony stage whispers to Natasha and Bruce, bringing his hand up to comically shield Jane from his words.

“Her not-boyfriend,” Jane corrects. In a collective motion, Natasha rolls her eyes and Bruce solemnly shakes his head. Tony’s heart seems whole for the first time since last night. He feels like himself, not a nervous version of his ghost. He grins at the small smile Bruce allows himself.

His mood hiccups as the momentary grace on Bruce’s face falters, his eyebrows furrowing. “Did you see that?” He asks no one in particular. His eyes point down to one of the many oak trees lining the steps to the back parking lot. Tony follows his gaze to a few shivering branches just a couple steps up from the bottom of the hill. He catches sight of a foot being pulled in to the thicket of foliage.

“What the —“

“It was the guy from our History class,” Bruce says to Tony, “the new guy. Blond. Curt, or something —“

“Clint?” Natasha interjects.

“Yeah, I think so. He is just climbing that tree over there,” Bruce’s lips show amusement, a laugh close to the surface.

“Clint,” Tony ruminates, “quiet kid, in the back?”

Bruce nods, “You know him, Tasha?”

Natasha shrugs, not committing to any real answer.

“Why the fuck — a tree?” Tony mutters to himself.

“I got paired with him on a science project today,” she says.

Tony spins, fixing her with an incredulous stare, the edges of it buzzing with amusement. “What is he doing in a tree?”

“How the hell should I know?” Natasha counters, “I talked to him for like thirty minutes. All I know is his opinion on chemistry and I barely know that.”

“Well,” Tony breathes to finish collecting his thoughts, “go ask him.”

Natasha can’t help it, her signature eye-roll focuses itself on Tony. “I’m not going to go ask him. What does it matter if he is in a tree?”

Tony puts on a face of theatric offense, “I am shocked. What does it matter? It matters! He could be a threat to national security. He might have a sawed off shot gun up there, just waiting to mow mothers down. You have to go neutralize the threat, Tasha.”

“Sawed off shotguns are for short range killing,” Bruce points out.

“Fine then a _long bow_ , whatever, just go ask him what he is doing,” He prods her helplessly in the knee. A cold realization floods through her — he isn’t going to let up until she goes.

“Why me?” She tries to figure out which game Tony is playing, but all the happy smirk on his face tells her is that he is certainly playing.

He shrugs lightly, not showing his hand, “because you have the biggest tits here — no offense, Jane.”

Jane shrugs lightly, covering her face with a thick fantasy novel and effectively taking herself out of the conversation.

“God,” Natasha huffs, getting to her feet and prodding down the concrete steps, “You’re a real pig, Stark.”

“What? It was a compliment!” He shouts after her, “Your tits are magic, Tasha!”

His smirk fixed gleefully on his face, Tony watches as Natasha salutes him with a middle finger. She is delicate and sure of herself, sauntering down to Clint’s oak tree. Tony half expects her to keep on walking. Natasha usually makes it her job to never do something Tony has told her to but to the surprise of the group, she stops under the boy’s tree, lingering oddly below it’s branches.

Natasha clears her throat and uncertainly tries calling, “Hey!” up through the criss cross of branches, trying to be aware of making her voice loud enough for him. Still, nothing comes of it. She can make out the soles of his tennis shoes and the dirty hem of his jeans through holes in the leaves. She tries again louder this time. Motion shakes the branches and she takes a few steps back to allow him to jump down. He doesn’t. Instead, a face appears, poking upside down out of the cover of leaves, hanging precipitously down. She wanders what contortion his body is in to make the appearance possible.

“Oh,” he says, a crescent shape on his lips, not quite looking like a smile, “It’s you.” It is the same face from chemistry that morning, looking more like it belongs to someone begging off the freeway than to a high school student.

“It’s me?” she counters, folding her arms over her chest, “It’s you. In a tree.”

He shrugs, a motion that seems odd when preformed upside down. In a second of flips, however, he is standing upright on the ground. His feet land silently in the grass, his fall showing only control, only a mastery of his own body.

“So, Na-ta-sha,” Clint says, resting his back against the thick trunk of his tree, “Can I help you with something? I hope it’s not more science. I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t know shit about science. Got a real case of the not-smarts. But I am at your service otherwise.”

Natasha shakes her head. She takes a beat to herself, unsure on how to dive in to the absurdity of her standing in front of him. “Well, I’ve been pimped out, honestly. My friends are curious —“

“That’s that Stark guy, right?” he interrupts, his eyes finding the group of teens standing up near the top of the stairs. She follows his stare. Bruce and Jane have turned in to a huddle of theories and debate in the last minute, enrapt in some science magazine Bruce produced from somewhere. Normally, Tony would take these moments to attempt to show his dominance, his intellectual superiority against the two people who have ever challenged it. But not today. He has his proud smirk fixed down on them. Even from this distance, Natasha can recognize something hazardous in the way he raises his eyebrows

“I hear he is loaded,” Clint concludes.

“How else does someone get such a violently developed sense of entitlement?” Natasha mutters, a deadly gravel in her voice.

Clint smiles at her, a good natured laugh coming out, “You’re pretty funny.”

“I — what?” Her mask becomes screwed up with off guard wonder. His lopsided grin becomes more lopsided.

“So, sorry, I interrupted. My manners can be a little — rough, seeing as no one ever taught me any. You were pimped out? Friends were wondering?” She eyes him as he casually twists backwards, allowing a loud pop to be heard from a spine. Letting out a sigh, he offers her another sloppy grin.

“They were curious about — Well, it’s a bit weird, right? Climbing a tree during lunch at school?”

He quirks an eyebrow up, looking oddly up through the branches of his tree. “You came here to ask about climbing trees?”

“About you climbing trees. Namely, why?”

He laughs, shrugging merrily, “Just hanging around. Why not? You never climb trees? It’s fun.”

“No, I don’t climb trees,” she replies. Perhaps she had tried, once or twice, long ago, but her aunt hadn’t allowed any frivolousness like that when she was growing up. It wasn’t the activity for proper little girls.

“No? You should try. It’s fun.”

Natasha shakes her head, struck by a lack of something to say. Slowly, she turns her eyes back on him to find him examining the maze of branches above him, looking for the perfect one to hoist him back in to the tree. He reads to lines extruding for the oak like they are bars on his personal jungle gym. She watches him lift his arm, noticing the protrusion of his muscles as he grasps a thick enough branch. She watches as they swell with effort. He begins to lift himself off the ground.

“You’re not reading my lips this time,” she chooses to say. He drops his weight back down to his feet. She feels her heart hitch in anticipation of his face, of his eyes when they return to hers. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything. She recalls the way his eyes went blank a couple hours before, a void that seemed almost angry.

But when their faces meet again, he is wearing an easy smile. Lopsided and carefree. “You’re talking louder.”

Across the campus, a bell rings out. The proper little girl part of her pushes her to not be late for her next class. She nods her head to him, not bothering to force a parting smile and turns to rejoin her friends.

“See you in class,” Clint calls behind her.

Natasha’s friends linger at the top of the stairs, allowing her to catch up before they start the journey back to class. A small tickle in Natasha’s brain tells her to turn around, to trace the direction Clint disappears in next but she doesn’t. She keeps her head trained forward.

“So, what’s the verdict? What sort of weapons did he have hidden up there?” Tony asks, a joyousness bouncing in his voice, his heels bouncing underneath him. He has to quicken his jaunt to keep up with Natasha’s swaying hips.

Natasha scoffs, “You know he didn't have anything.”

“I don’t know anything, Tasha. What was he doing?”

Natasha shrugs and pushes her pace to break out of the group’s synced march. “Just hanging around.”

 

To feel normal, Steve puts on his oldest pair of sweatpants and a grey _Army_ t-shirt just as dusk begins to find his neighborhood. He sucks on his inhaler for a few seconds, medicating his lungs against the oncoming strain. He kisses his mother on the cheek as she dresses in her scrubs for a night shift at the VA hospital and he leaves for a run.

Some masochistic twinkle in the back of this head tells him to head down the hill this time. Usually, his runs take him up the small incline to the flatness of the plateau above. There is an elementary school just half a mile across the level ground. There he can jog on the maintained grass of a government funded facility. But today, his legs crave the challenge of something unkept, something wild and malicious. He knows that if he climbs down the hill, eventually he’ll have to climb back up it. That is exactly the distraction he is looking for.

Steve’s legs take him through the rows of house down at the bottom of the hill, the majority of them a hodgepodge of crooked median wage homes in various states of disrepair. His eyes get caught on one house in particular — the rust-colored Banner home, grey trim the some color as the feeling in Steve’s stomach. It has been that way since Steve was a small boy. It has a way of seeming silent and chaotic all at once.

His muscles carry him to the entrance of a trail in the loose forest that stretches behind the residential area. He circles around the trail, taking down winding hills and up root-infested inclines. He gets lost in his thoughts, or the lack of them. He finds a rhythms in his breath, pulling in, pushing out, each sinew connecting with each other, creating a perfect motion. He knows that as long as he keeps running that he can manage to forget anything for the moment. He can forget his father’s casket or the way his mother looked too small in her scrubs that night, like the weight of his father was taken from her own body and buried six feet under.

When he is sure that he won’t be able to make it back up the hill if he keeps running, he turns back. He lets his clip falter just a little as he re-enters the neighborhood. The muscles in his chest seem to have a way of sensing internally when he is nearing the Banner house. He prepares himself for the same rush of blood to his his conscience to occur as he nears it. Over the sound of his breath, pulling in, pushing out, he can hear the sound of loose plastic wheels over uneven gravel. Steve catches sight of Bruce, struggling to drag two heavy garbage bins down to the curb.

As Steve nears, his footsteps catch Bruce’s attention and he glances up to spy whoever is closing in on him. Steve begins to lift his hand to wave only to feel his feet stumble in to each other as he catches sight of the ugly bruise marring the side of Bruce’s face. Bruce adjusts himself, forcing his mop of dark curls to fall over the majority of the mark.

“Hey Steve,” Bruce says, feeling his breath hitch in his throat at the shocked look on Steve’s face.

Somewhere inside himself, Steve remembers the sensation of seeing Bruce after his father goes after him. His body has forgotten however, feeling bowled over as it all floods back to him at once. Chills take over his body and he is eight years old again. He is watching Bruce’s father yank him inside their house so hard that Steve can hear the snap of Bruce’s wrist. He can still hear Bruce’s whimper, still see Bruce bite his lip, trying to hold in a scream. He can still feel Bruce’s breath hot on his ear later that night, his wrist wrapped in a cast, asking Steve — _begging_ Steve not to tell anyone what happened. Not even Natasha or Jane. Not even Tony. His heart feels as shattered as it did that night.

“Steve?” Bruce asks, his brow knitted together as he watches Steve try to rejoin his body in the present.

Steve shakes his head, becomes a member of the correct timeline, “Sorry, hey. I just — are you okay?”

Bruce turns away from Steve so the bruise is hidden by shadow. It’s a feeble action, done out of ceremony rather than function. “Yeah,” he nods loosely, “sure, I’m okay. You okay?” Steve feels like there is something darker to the way Bruce lies now, something more menacing.

“Yeah, I’m okay, course. I was just — uh, going for a run,” Steve blushes, he doesn’t even know why.

A small crease appears on Bruce’s face, indicative of a smile, “you go for runs?”

An embarrassed laugh escapes Steve, “yeah, I do.”

Awkwardness holds itself thick in the air. Steve wants to say something more — something like, _this is still happening?_ and _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ and _still!_ But he just walks sturdily up to Bruce and hooks his hands around the handle of one of the overloaded garbage bins and begins to pull it to the curb. Bruce’s smile dissipates and he follows his once friend.

The garbage bin tips upright with a loud thud on the ground. Steve notices how Bruce’s nerves all leap in to action at the force of the noise. For a second, Bruce’s eyes become screwed up in panic. But it is only that second. And then he just looks tired and in that way, he looks exactly like the boy Steve would camp out under the stars with during summer breaks in elementary school.

“Your eye is hurt.” It slips out more than Steve decides to say it, but the sound is a vacuum consuming all the air in the neighborhood.

Bruce just shakes his head, looking away, and mutters, “Steve…”

“What?” he asks, his voice all soft and caring. The word is a prod, poking in between Bruce’s ribs, asking a million questions, begging for them to be answered.

“Just,” Bruce can only shake his head again, “just don’t say anything, okay? I gotta get back inside.”

Steve wants to say something more. Something like, _why would you ever go back inside?_ and _are you f— kidding me?_ and _what happened when I_ — his thoughts become a lump in his throat. They refuse to complete themselves.

He lifts his hand in an awkward wave that Bruce doesn’t turn to notice. “See you in school, maybe.”

The reply he receives is the sound of Bruce shutting his front door.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint became friends with the trees of his new high school campus on the first day of class. His history class is on the third floor, where the tops of trees wave in the gentle September wind outside the room’s window. He tries, in vain, everyday to keep his eyes trained on the teacher’s lips. His ears might be shot, but his eyes can catch the quiver of a word coming out of someone’s mouth from across a football field. Which isn’t the same as being able to force himself to care about the shape of those words, about whatever lecture they are a foot soldier in. His eyes wander to the trees, his friends, with their strong branches aimed at the warm sun.

He wastes away the mornings in the trees, in his mind. High up, away from the plodding doldrums of indoors, where the particles of warmth are unfiltered, sink in to him like love.

However, this morning, it is raining. The grey droplets fall from the sky, pushing down the corners of Clint’s mouth. There are no gentle breezes to lull him through his history lesson, instead only melancholy swirls of drear. It is too much. He can’t watch his friends drenched in sadness. From the corner of his eye, a fidgety movement finds more interest to him. Tony Stark, usually laissez-faire and cleanly pressed, is bouncing his leg under his desk, his eye twitching toward the clock, then the door, then the clock. Clint smirks — he always likes watching rich kids squirm. But then he thinks of Natasha, her crimson hair glowing in yesterday’s sun and the flippant way she had mocked Tony and the subtle affection drawn under her gaze.

 _Na-ta-sha_ , his lips move silently over the syllables of her name. He thinks more about her. There is something sour inside her he thinks he likes.  
The final bell, signifying the beginning of the school day, rings out just as the classroom door swings open one last time. Bruce Banner tries to slip in unnoticed, his body curled around himself. Mr. Carrow eyes him, his mouth pulled straight in displeasure. Bruce avoids his stare, avoids everyone’s stare, as he takes a seat next to Tony. Clint keeps watching as the rest of the class falls in to bored stupors to the sound of Mr. Carrow’s opening lecture. There is something prickly about the way Tony doesn’t settle down when Bruce arrives.

Clint lets out a low hiss as Bruce turns to whisper to Tony, showing the side of his face blighted with all manner of purples. Things in Clint’s brain stop. They start up again too quickly. He imagines the blow that would create that canvas of shades and his stomach processes the knowledge that it would take more than one blow. A force strikes his body rigid with electricity. He can’t turn to look at the teacher or the lonely tress outside. His eyes keep his rushing thoughts swirling around the low bounce of Bruce’s lips as he sinks back in to a consciousness clear enough to read them.

“Just shut up, all right?” He says to Tony, his rushed words hardly louder than the air around him.

“No,” is all Tony spits out for a few long seconds. “Tell me what happened. Is it just your eye? Did he do anything else? If things are getting really bad again — you — you should have come over —“

Clint begins to feel a heat rising through his body, a flushness that swallows his ability to move.

“It’s fine, it’s fine. He’s been stressed out. It was going to happen some time. Better me than Mom.”

His bad ear hurts. Barney is in his head, voice still the high trill of prepubescence, _better me than you_. His bad ear hurts. A sudden pain like his father has just finished smacking it. He is blindsided by the sense memory, everything going white around him. He is eight. He is small but Barney is big but Barney is no where. He is eight — _No — no he isn’t_. His father’s breath is in his nose. _No. He smells textbooks and the perfume of the student in front of him._ Sweat. Panic. The narrow shock of a fist to the side of his head.

Clint doesn’t realize he is on his feet, doesn’t realize his eyes are still on Bruce and Bruce is noticing him now.

“Clint?” Mr. Carrow says, “sit down.”

Clint can’t hear him. His hand is pressed against his bad ear, subconsciously trying to find solace in the pressure. All sound around him is deadened by the ringing in his ears — in his head. His brain slowly registers the eyes of all his classmates on him. He is not eight. He is still looking at Bruce, who begins to shift uncomfortably under his gaze.

Vibrations tingle against the cotton in his ears. “What?” he asks, knowing by the strain on his vocal chords that he has said it too loudly. He breaks his gaze from Bruce to look in the direction of the vibrations.

“Is there something wrong with your ear, Clint?” Clint sees Mr. Carrow say.

Clint drops his arm from his ear, hating the nakedness he feels against the pain still ringing through his head. “No,” he says, shaking his head, flinching at the awareness of his shouting. He tries to sit down but feels his knees’ locked upright. He realizes, slowly, as he reenters his surroundings more and more as his chest rises and falls, that he is breathing too last, that sweat has begun to bead down his head. He feels unsteady and sick.

“Maybe you should go to the nurse.” Mr. Carrow suggests gently, looking at Clint like he is something delicate. Clint only catches the words _go_ and _nurse_. He shakes his head, the old habit of avoiding medical care taking over for his lack of cognitive thought. He tries to sit down again, but there is a hand grasping above his elbow. He hadn’t heard Tony offer to take him. His body shakes Tony off, too violently, and his breathe doesn’t waiver from its forced pace.

“Thank you Tony. You don’t look well, Clint,” Mr. Carrow says but Clint doesn’t hear that either. He lets Tony lead him out of the room because he cannot breathe in the confined classroom. The air in the hallway isn’t less stagnant. He struggles for deep breaths. The air tastes sour and too familiar.

“What are you doing?” Clint tries not to shout as Tony begins to shove him again, instead it comes out as a growl, low and spiteful.

“Taking you to the nurse,” Tony bites, looking him unfazed in the eye. He has a suspicious glint to his stare, like he perceives Clint’s breakdown as a kind of threat.

“I ain’t going to the nurse.” Sound begins to come in waves through his muffled sensors. It only makes him feel more unsteady. Tony holds his hands up, showing his palms as if to prove he’d dropped his gun, and let’s Clint stagger towards the door. Outside, the wind is cool and wet with drops of rain. It is better, he takes fresh air in to his lungs. The world is naturally quiet, no pressure building inside the walls of school that seems more like a cage to Clint.

Tony appears behind him. Clint can feel his eyes moving up and down him, lingering on his bad ear. He feels like a science experiment and that is almost worse than the choking claustrophobia of the indoors. Tony circles him, calm, appraising.

“What do you want?” Clint barks at him. He is getting a handle on the sound of his own voice again.

“Just figuring you out,” Tony shrugs.

“Yeah well, let me know when you crack the case.”

“Shouldn’t take long.”

There is a smug confidence on Tony’s face and Clint wants to punch it. He talks himself down to a scoff. He tries to focus on the words of a social worker he’d been made to see a few years ago. _Violence begets violence._ He hadn’t understood the significance. He’d been trying to decipher it since and he’d found if he focused on that confusion instead of wanting to punch — he’d lose the urge.

He turns away from Tony, leans against a pillar and closes his eyes. _Violence begets violence. Better me than you_. The pulse in his ear is no longer directly reminiscent of his father’s knuckles pounding his ear drum. The pain becomes an ache, a dull companion that’ll whisper to him for days. He remembers this part. He reaches up to find blood oozing out of his ear.

There isn’t any.

The ache murmurs to him and he tries to let go of the last of the pressure in his chest. Breath it out. Slow and steady.

He realizes at some point someone told him the definition of a flashback.

“So, cowboy, tell me, what do you find so fascinating about Bruce Banner?”

Clint looks up at Tony, the intent in his eyes has become darker, zeroed in on Clint’s stare like Tony felt his own gaze was mechanized with a lie detector. Clint’s stomach churns, the memory of the purple portrait across Bruce’s face arises, his rushed lips spilling disgusting words threatening to trigger him, scraping at his ankles, ready to bring him back to childhood. Back to his parents house. Shotgun shack with cupboards that rattle when Papa Barton’s fists slam down on the counter. Everything rattles. Sound drifts in and out.

“Clint? Right? Your name is Clint?”

Clint nods, keeping himself floating. He won’t sink again. He won’t be three feet tall, won’t stare up at his father’s twisted face, won’t try to go slack so it won’t hurt as badly when the stumbling man connects with his flesh. He feels his fingernails dig in to the palm of his hand, keeping him suspended in reality.

“You’re freaking out again, man. Breathe.”

Clint tries to breathe. He swallows real air, fresh and clean, not thick with cigarette smoke and spilled whiskey. Blood pools around the crescent shape incisions on his palm.

“Hey, guy, maybe you should go to the nurse.”

Clint finds his breath, “I ain’t going to the goddamn nurse.”

 

Across the hill in the back of the school, it’s grass drying in the sunshine from the morning’s drizzle, Tony can see Thor sticking up like a beacon in the night. His blond locks swirl around his head with each breeze that dances by, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He laughs, teeth gleaming and twinkling like raindrops in the sunlight, telling a story to Jane. His eyes are alight when they are on hers, sparkling with an affection that makes Jane’s cheeks flush.

Tony rolls his eyes. As far as he can tell, they should just fuck and get it over with.

Natasha stretches in the grass, her body folded in half, her ample chest pressed against the knobs of her knees. Tony tries, like he always tries, not to ogle the curves she shapes with each bend of her taut body. Tony tries to imagine her as nine, ruddy cheeked, with gaped teeth and frizzy hair. He tries to think of her shoving his face in the mud in sixth grade when he told her she was pretty. Somehow, the display of violence hit his gut in the same way the bat of her eyelashes did.

He tries not to think of that either. There is something that feels filthy about noticing her feminine charms — like getting aroused by a cousin.

“Good morning,” Thor grins as Tony nears the students resting in the grass.

“Quite,” Tony replies blankly, “any of you seen Bruce?”

Thor’s smiles waivers. Looking down at his fingernails, he Thor-whispers, “Our friend was injured this morning.”

Natasha freezes in her backbend, only for a second, before her impassive face hardens in to some greater impasse and she continues to stretch. Jane’s fingers ghost over Thor’s knuckles, catching his eyes and bringing them back to her face. Even with the concern creasing his brow, a smile flickers when he connects with her eyes.

“I’m sure he is fine,” Jane says calmly, the words hollow even as she tries for a steady belief in them. Thor nods sadly, understanding the phantom lingering behind the lie. Thor’s glowing heart seems to take each of Bruce’s beatings with the same painful force every time. The years have yet to inure him to the sight. Tony wonders, with the golden soul Thor keeps glittering inside himself, if he’d ever be able to get used to it. Perhaps he shouldn’t.

“Well, I checked every bathroom and lab and empty classroom on this goddamn campus, so where ever he is hiding, he is hidden.” Tony takes a seat in the grass, feeling moisture soak through his pants. He looks over at Natasha. Her arms are held high over her head, the grace of a ballerina in the curve of her elbow, her wrist, everything, she leans to the side. Deep breathes, steady and sturdy, like all of her movements.

“I think your boy freaked him out,” Tony says to her. Her brow furrows. It is all she needs to do for him to know she is cursing him out and asking a question at the same time. “You know how to pick ‘em, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Mr. Clint Whatever. He’s a strange bird.”

“What are you talking about, Stark?”

Tony narrows his eyes in an empty gesture that mirrors Natasha’s sincere one. He starts his telling of Clint’s episode in class with the a hissed “ _Romanov_ ” and then goes in to Clint’s fixation with Bruce and the delicate obsession he displayed for his left ear. “It was something about Bruce,” Tony mutters the words like he is trying to understand them as they come out, “I don’t know. I tried to ask him, but he just started freaking out again. Something weird about that guy, Red. I don’t know if you should fuck him anymore.”

“You’re disgusting,” Natasha tells him without looking at him. Her face isn’t cross like it usually is when he pushes her buttons. It is a mask of quiet contemplation, looking blankly the shimmering grass around her. Per usual, Tony has no idea what she is thinking.

 

Bruce knows a storage closet that is never locked. It is in a dark corner of the drama department, behind steel doors and abandoned props. He can hardly hear the noise of theatre kids projecting monologues and teasing one another over poorly forced deliveries. Their convivial laughter is white noise against the thoughts rushing in to a cyclone behind his closed eyelids.

It is Clint Barton, his eyes wide with panic and screwed up beyond translation, yet they percolate with a sick knowledge and they are on Bruce. Bruce feels fevered with the imprint of pinpoint pupils in Clint’s stormy blues inside the darkness of his head.

All Bruce can think is, _he knows, he knows, he knows_. Around and around. He resents Tony as much as he is thankful for his friend ushering Clint out of the classroom. Bruce had felt the eyes of the classroom fall on him with Clint removed. He had wondered briefly if his bruise possessed luminous properties.

Bruce hugs his knees from a cramped spot under moth bitten costumes. He tries to breathe deeply as his brain tells him, _he knows, he knows, he knows…_

His brain tells him, _you can’t trust an unknown variable._

 

When Barney gets home from the base, all Clint sees is his teeth gleaming like daggers. Barney smiles and Clint sees their father, a staggering lump barreling towards him. His bad ear hurts. The trigger isn’t Bruce, Clint’s racing heart tells him suddenly, the trigger is Barney. He doesn’t catch his brother’s eye as he rushes out the door, no coat to accompany him to the park he says he is going to.

It is a long walk to a sad patch of greenery, too meager and unkempt. The loneliness of an abandoned play set makes Clint’s head spin. Graffiti on the base of the slide. Beer cans in the sandbox. He has to keep walking. Hands in his pockets, he shuffles down a road he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where he is going. He only knows he is getting away from Barney, away from home. He flinches at his own thoughts. _Home._ Mentally, he puts a quarter in the swear jar.

Movement accompanies his panic, rather than assuaging it. Barney is in his head. Thirteen years old. Fumes radiate out of every one of his pores, giving him a force field of rage with a foot radius around him. They stand watching Mom and Dad, twin graves, being covered in dirt. Barney snarls in his ear, “Stop crying, pussy. Don’t fucking cry for them.”

Clint doesn’t notice the silver car drive past him and pull off to the side of the road. He is almost too far away to hear the shouting that pours out the driver’s side window. He realizes it is his name almost too late, but turns around to a see a face poking out of the car, obscured by the clouds of fumes from the idling engine. Cautiously, he steps towards the voice.

“Get the hell over here,” it says and begins to tickle a familiar face to the surface of his mind. _Na-ta-sha_ , he feels his tongue push out the shape of his name. He walks around the body of the car and saddles up next to the open window.

“What are you doing?” she asks before he can say hello. The way her eyebrows crinkle in annoyance makes him forget things for a moment. His lips want to curve around the feeling of her name again, but he holds it in.

“Why _are_ you wearing so much make up?” he counters.

“Shut up,” an extra quirk of beauty forms when her face becomes enraged. “Get in.” Clint doesn’t need to be told twice. He circles her car and slides in to the passenger seat.

“Is that a tutu in your backseat?” he asks, noticing a feathered pile of tulle. He looks back at Natasha, knowing before seeing that his questions has had no affect on the seriousness drawn across her porcelain face.

“Why are you wearing so much make up? Reminds me of a circus.”

She sighs, allowing him this one answer, “Dance performance. Hence the tutu.”

A smile tugs at the corner of his lips for perhaps the first time today, “You’re some kind of ballerina?”

“Not _some kind_. I am a damn good ballerina.”

Clint open his mouth to attempt another quip, but she cuts him off, her voice as sharp as a knife, “what do you know about Bruce Banner?”

He should have expected it, maybe. He lets out a long breath, like he had been holding it for hours. _Bruce Banner_. Who was he? No one. A small, mousy brunette in a class Clint didn’t care for. A silent figurine who appeared next to people who were more interesting. No one who should weigh on his thoughts, who should act as a jam in the cogs of his already broken machine

“Nothing,” he says, tries to say it as a period.

“Tony told me what happened,” her words are ellipses, “Said you freaked out because of Bruce. I want to know what you know.”

“ _Nothing_. And I didn’t freak out.” He holds her glare, matches it. She isn’t the only person with ice in her veins.

She shakes her head, squeezing her knuckles white on her steering wheel, “fine. Whatever. Look — I don’t care what you know. But you know something and it dies with you, get it? I’ve known Bruce for a long time and if you say a damn word about him to anyone — if you do _anythin_ _g_ to cause him trouble, to dig in to something you don’t understand — well. I know plenty of ways to make life difficult for you.” Natasha’s words are said without inflection but the eye contact she makes with Clint is sure to sign the dotted line at the bottom of a contract. She is promising him something and Clint swallows the understanding that Natasha keeps her promises.

“Get it?”

Clint nods. His thoughts are heavy. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good.”

Clint doesn’t move right away, not wanting to deal with the too sudden cold outside. She speaks again, her voice softened, “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

He almost laughs but then he thinks of home — not home — and Barney. He can’t reconcile the new, placid Barney with the volcano in his head, the daily eruptions that echo from the past. The boy that got him kicked around the system and then abandoned. He doesn’t want to try and reconcile it tonight. He shakes his head and forces himself to open her door and step in to the early fall chill. “I could use a walk.”

Natasha leans over her gear shift and stops the door from slamming shut. She catches his eye. He feels too full compared to her hollow emerald eyes. “Look — I’m sorry. I know I can be — _intense_ or whatever. I’m just trying to look out for my friend.”

He manages a small smile for her. “I know. ” The car door shuts.

 

Even though it doesn’t make him feel normal, Steve turns down the hill outside his driveway, jogging lightly as the decline carries him to that same valley of unloved homes. He runs past Bruce’s house, noting the ominous cloud hanging over it and the garbage bins still sitting out front. He convinces his legs to keep running and they run until it becomes dark, until he knows his mother will scold him for staying out so late after sunset and he forces his legs to turn around.

The garbage bins are standing, proud of their evasion of being properly put away. Steve runs passed them and then runs back and runs away and back before he finally clutches the two handles and pulls the bins up the driveway. Still trusting the battered chord hanging from the Banner’s moss covered side gate to unlatch the lock, Steve gives it a gentle tug and the gate swings open. The same two spots sit empty, waiting for their bins, just like they always have. Steve quietly places the bins in their homes and turns to sneak out of the Banner’s side yard before Brian can stir from his vodka stupor.

Steve hears the rusty screen door slam shut. He freezes, feeling a flush of concern. Did he mess up? Was Brian going to fly in to a rage because he trespassed? His stomach isn’t able to settle itself, not even when Bruce appears with his brow furrowed, tip toeing in Steve’s direction.

“What the hell is — Steve?” His eyes are wide, worry washing away with surprise. “What are you doing?”

“Where’s your dad?”

Bruce’s face hardens and Steve feels stupid for asking. “Out.”

Steve’s heart unclenches. “Oh. Good. I — uh, I was just jogging by and I saw the uh, bins still at the curb. Just put them back.”

Bruce eyes him suspiciously, like he is up to something sinister. Bruce should know Steve has never done anything sinister in his life, but Bruce is conditioned not to believe in the untainted goodness. “You — you didn’t have to do that.”

“Yeah. I know. I was just — “

“Being a boy scout?”

Steve cheeks redden. He rubs the back of his neck, “Yeah. I guess so.”

They stand too far apart to signify friendship. Bruce plays with the thread unwinding from his sweater. Steve searches for something to say, something to remind Bruce that he is still Steve, that they are still the same two people they were when they were kids. All he can think to say is, “Don’t you wish this wasn’t awkward?”

Bruce looks up and Steve is surprised to see a delicate smile on his lips. “Yeah.” It’s almost enough just to hear him agree. Bruce looks around, staring down the road like he trying to see in to the future. “Do you wanna, er —“ he clears his throat, “do you wanna come inside for a minute? They shouldn’t be home for a while.”

Steve smiles and nods, feeling light as he follows Bruce inside. It smells the same in there, like Brian’s brand of cigar and lemon pledge and sweat. Steve feels like he is eight years old again, collecting Bruce for a day of wandering around the woods before Steve has to go to boy scouts.


End file.
